The Surpisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

is. The world doesn’t know your purpose or priorities and isn’t
responsible for them—you are. So it’s your job to protect your time
blocks from all those who don’t know what matters most to you, and
from yourself when you forget.
The best way to protect your time blocks is to adopt the mindset
that they can’t be moved. So, when someone tries to double-book you,
just say, “I’m sorry, I already have an appointment at that time,” and
offer other options. If the other person is disappointed, you’re
sympathetic but ultimately unmoved. Extraordinarily results-oriented
people—the very people who have the most demands on their time—
do this every day. They keep their most important appointment.
The toughest part is navigating a high-level request. How do you
say no to anyone important—your boss, a key client, your mom—who
asks you to do something with a high sense of urgency? One way is to
say yes and then ask, “If I have that done by [a specific time in the
future], would that work?” Most often, these requests are more about
an immediate need to hand a task off than about a need for it to be
done immediately, so the requester usually just wants to know it will
get done. Sometimes the request is real, needs to be done now, and
you must drop what you’re doing and do it. In this situation, follow
the rule “If you erase, you must replace” and immediately reschedule
your time block.
Then there’s you. If you’re already feeling overbooked and
overworked, it can seem incredibly challenging to hold to a time
block. It can be hard to imagine how everything else will get done
when so much time is given to ONE Thing. The key is to fully
internalize the domino fall that will happen when your ONE Thing
gets done, and remember that everything else you might do or have to
do will be easier or unnecessary. When I first began to time block, the
most effective thing I did was to put up a sheet of paper that said,
“Until My ONE Thing Is Done—Everything Else Is A Distraction!”
Try it. Put it where you can see it and others can see it as well. Then